The David Middleton Reed Collection of Chinese Studies

Abstract

A special area-studies library can develop in one of three ways. It can be comprehensive, amassing everything published in the field; it can be selective, narrowing its scope to one small part of the subject at hand; or, it can be both comprehensive and selective, gathering key works that touch on a broad range of topics. The David Middleton Reed Collection of Chinese studies at The University of Iowa has chosen the last course, striving to acquire important materials that support research throughout the broad spectrum of sinology. The Reed collection was begun in 1977 when Harold L. and Virginia Middleton Reed donated a library of 538 volumes owned by their late son, David Middleton Reed, a budding scholar of Chinese philosophy at Stanford University. Since that time they have supported the growth of the collection with yearly monetary contributions matched by funds from the General Electric Company. The core of David Reed’s library is the Jen shou pen erh shih wu shih (The 25 official histories of China) (T’ai-pei: Erh shih wu shih pien k’an kuan, 1955-1958. 466 volumes).1 Each of these standard histories covers one dynasty of pre-Ch’ing China. It begins with the Shih chi (Record of history) compiled by Ssu-ma Ch’ien, the great scholar of Han China whose cyclical theory of history set the tone for later historiography throughout East Asia. It ends with the Ming shih (History of the Ming dynasty). The number of official histories has varied as new ones were added. By the late eighteenth century there were altogether 22 recognized works, but the retrieval of the earlier T’ang and Five Dynasties chronicles brought the total to 24, which became 25 after imperial recognition of the Yuan shih (History of the Yuan dynasty). These vast works, ordered by the emperor of the time, tended to be more and more standardized as